


Trying to Fight Gravity

by PumpkinDoodles



Series: 'As is' Means With All Faults [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 08:18:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19147135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinDoodles/pseuds/PumpkinDoodles
Summary: The End





	Trying to Fight Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Endgame spoilers, mentions of character deaths.

For a minute, Brock thought he was seeing things. He’d stepped out of the Wakandan building, battered and bruised, and looked up. Stopped breathing for a second. There was a line of figures coming up the pathway. Brock thought he recognized--it couldn’t be, he thought, not here. She couldn’t be here. He started to run. He didn’t realize he was screaming until he got to her and heard the sounds he was making. He was crying already. “It’s okay,” Darcy told him. Faces he recognized but didn’t see went around them. Jane Foster smiled gently and went in search of Thor with her now-gangly son.  

“You’re here,” he said, “you’re here.” He put a bruised hand to her face. Reached down to touch the baby in her arms. “She’s the same,” Brock said, putting his arms around them. “She’s absolutely the same,” he marveled. Pearl blinked at him with his eyes.

“Stephen sent us all, once it was safe. It didn’t feel like a long time to me, but Jane told me it’s been awhile,” Darcy whispered, nuzzling his face.

“Oh God,” he said, beginning to sob, a rough, raw sound. He cried in her hair. “Years. I’m one hundred and seven years old,” he said, still holding her. They stayed like that for a minute. Pearl gurgled and clutched as his arm and he felt like the whole world had tilted sideways and the air had left his lungs.

“You look the same to me,” she said, once he’d gotten some of the hot, choking sobs out of his system. She was smiling through her tears.

“I don’t feel the same,” he said.

“We lost people, didn’t we?” she said. Her voice was sad.

“Yeah,” he said. There would be time to talk about that later, he thought.

“You want to hold her?” Darcy said, shifting Pearl towards him in a way that was so familiar, it felt like his heart would literally break open inside his chest.

“Yeah,” he said, “I do.” He took Pearl carefully in his arms and settled her so he could feel her breathing against his neck. He felt the tears rush him again and looked at Darcy.  

“Just--just, uh, please tell me you didn’t marry somebody else, okay?” Darcy said. “Or have kids with somebody else, because I don’t think I could handle that and it’s all I can think about.” She brushed her own tears away roughly, leaving a red blotch on her cheek. Her face was anxious. He started shaking his head before she’d gotten the words out.

“No,” he said. “Never.”

“Good,” she said, pressing her lips together in something between a grimace and smile. “I wouldn’t want to have to divorce you when I love you so much,” she stuttered out, as the tears started to run down her face again. He used his free arm to pull her closer and she leaned against his other shoulder. Her breathing was ragged. He could hear her whispering the words _so worried, so worried_ as she trembled a little. “When I found out, I thought maybe you could have moved on without us, it had been so long,” she said. He pressed his hand against her back, spreading his fingers out. She could feel him more that way, he thought.

“Nothing to worry about. I don’t know how you’re gonna feel about these tattoos I’ve got now, though,” he said. “Me and Barton, we sorta went through a grief phase. Laura might divorce him when she sees the sleeve he’s got.”

“Grief tattooing?” Darcy said, starting to chuckle.

“And really fucking terrible haircuts, sweetheart,” he said.

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“Nope,” he told her.

 

His wife. His wife was back. His daughter was back. He felt her hand touch the back of his neck tentatively and they looked at each other.  Brock felt that sideways feeling again and realized Darcy was swaying a little on her feet, too. “I, uh, think I’ve got some of her toys around here,” he said. “You want to go find them?” She nodded. He led her quietly inside, past the rooms of crying people, past the famous, past the royalty, to the room with the single bed where he’d left his things.

At the sight of her old stuffed animal tucked into his duffel bag, Pearl babbled excitedly and he put the toy in her still-tiny hands with a smile. Brock heard another sound behind him and half-turned. Darcy had let go of his hand and sunk down on her knees to the floor, sobbing. “Hey, hey,” he said, crouching down next to her. “We’re okay,” he said.

“Don’t tell me that when you’ve been carrying her Iron Man bear around for five years,” Darcy said in a raw voice. “I know you weren’t okay.”

“No,” he said, “but I will be.”

“He’s not here, either, is he?” Darcy said, looking at Pearl and the bear. Tony had given it to her. “I didn’t hear him out there. There’s no way he’d be quiet if he were here now,” she said. Brock shook his head sadly.

“He’d want you to meet his little girl, though,” Brock said.

“Tony had a little girl while we were gone?” Darcy said. Her eyes were wide. Brock nodded.

 

He held her as she cried and Pearl waved the bear.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspiration: Ani DiFranco's "Falling Is Like This."


End file.
